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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28629267">Shak</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pittedpeachpomegranate/pseuds/pittedpeachpomegranate'>pittedpeachpomegranate</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>certain dark things [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Booker | Sebastian le Livre &amp; Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani Friendship, Bottom Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Developing Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Extended Metaphors, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova are in Love, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani is an Incurable Romantic, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Loves Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, POV Multiple, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Too Many Metaphors, Top Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, You Know What You Signed Up For, no beta we die like men, sequel to shrike</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:01:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,087</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28629267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pittedpeachpomegranate/pseuds/pittedpeachpomegranate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One evening, while laying tangled up together, Nicky brings up the possibility of returning to Malta for a while. He’s been thinking about it for some time, about taking Joe back to that little cottage, maybe swimming together in the ocean, making shakshuka for Joe in the mornings. Having some time together, just the two of them. </p><p>But Joe tenses minutely in his arms at the suggestion, just enough for Nicky to notice, before he deliberately relaxes, shooting Nicky a tight smile.</p><p>“Why would we do that,” he starts, pushing Nicky on his back and travelling down his body, “when I can ravish you right here?” his breath ghosting over Nicky’s cock, causing all the blood to leave Nicky’s brain in a rush.</p><p>-</p><p>In which old habits die hard, and building a relationship out of centuries' worth of fighting is even harder.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>certain dark things [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>374</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Shak</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Ahhh guys! I'm so excited for you guys to read this fic, you don't even know.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tentative. That’s the word Nicky would use to describe the slow unfolding of his burgeoning relationship with Joe. Fragile, but not like glass; more like the fluttering heartbeat of a small bird. Thrashing wildly, too fast for its own good.</p><p>It’s been a few months, the time passing like a fever dream in the summer. Weekends spent in bed with Joe until they were sweaty and spent, trading lazy kisses and overdue confessions of love. Teaching Nile how to swordfight, how to hold a sniper in her hands and feel its weight without it becoming crippling on her shoulders.</p><p>But underneath Nicky’s skin is an alloy of copper and steel, plated over bones that have broken over and over and over again. His index finger, dusted with gunpowder violence, is still on the trigger. Trailing his hand along Joe’s sternum plate, Nicky is aware of exactly how much force is required to crack it open.</p><p>
  <em>How much of me can you take?</em>
</p><p>There’s a ceaseless humming, a drumming beat of war in Nicky’s chest; between fight or flight, Nicky has only ever picked the latter, though it gets easier and easier to ignore it with every passing day. When Joe presses his face against it at night, Nicky wonders if he can hear the echo of gunshot ghosts that live in his heart. But Joe keeps pulling Nicky into him, as if his body could be anything more than an armament of mistakes.</p><p>One evening, while laying tangled up together, Nicky brings up the possibility of returning to Malta for a while. He’s been thinking about it for some time, about taking Joe back to that little cottage, maybe swimming together in the ocean, making shakshuka for Joe in the mornings. Having some time together, just the two of them.</p><p>But Joe tenses minutely in his arms at the suggestion, just enough for Nicky to notice, before he deliberately relaxes, shooting Nicky a tight smile.</p><p>“Why would we do that,” he starts, pushing Nicky on his back and travelling down his body, “when I can ravish you right here?” his breath ghosting over Nicky’s cock, causing all the blood to leave Nicky’s brain in a rush.</p><p>And then Joe sets to work, and Nicky forgets all about the conversation, about everything else except for Joe, entirely consumed by him.</p><p>He hasn’t touched a cigarette in 48 days.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>No one speaks Joe’s language, anymore. Or at least not the one his mother and father taught him, their laughter like sunlight, all the oddities and vernacular lost to time. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Love is a shared language, he once read. Well, all Joe has is this desolate silence.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe is the language, he’s the freshwater of the river next to his home, the oldest man still walking upon the salted topsoil of this earth. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>When Nicky kisses him in Malta, clinging to Joe’s shoulders, Joe thinks: half of my soul, he thinks: linger in the open hallway of my chest, and then he doesn’t think at all.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When Nicky kisses him in Malta, the language on his tongue is still foreign, but the way he sighs ‘Dio,’ into Joe’s mouth is more sacred and familiar than anything he’s felt in a long time.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>When Nicky kisses him in Malta, he feels a little less alone.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>The moment Booker returns, and along with him their long lost sister, the dynamics of their little unit shift again.</p><p>Andy all but drags Quynh back out the door almost immediately after she arrives, and they’ve not been back since; Nicky presumes they’re off having intense reunion sex somewhere. Good for them.</p><p>But back at the safehouse, Nicky relinquishes his spot on the couch next to Joe during matches, instead curling up on the armchair to read while Booker tries his best to pretend everything is normal.</p><p>The worst part has to be Joe, though, who seems perfectly happy to let him. As if Booker wasn’t perfectly happy to let Joe rot in a cell for as long as it took for Merrick to have his answers, which would have been <em>forever.</em></p><p>Nicky resolves to make sure Booker understands that <em>he</em> isn’t forgetting anytime soon.</p><p>He seeks Booker out one afternoon, finds him curled up with a hardcover copy of Don Quixote. Nicky sits on the coffee table across from him and waits until Booker glances up at him, raising one eyebrow in a silent question.</p><p>“I’m not going to let you hurt him again,” Nicky says lowly in response.</p><p>Booker levels him with an unimpressed look, sitting up and closing the book, marking his place with a finger. Nicky hasn’t seen Booker drink since he got back, but he’s not holding out too much hope for that lasting long.</p><p>“Ditto, Nicky. I was there after Malta, you know.”</p><p>Nicky doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>It’s cold when Joe stirs from sleep; the room still catching up to the warmth of sunrise, the world hazy, like the morning air was only just yawning awake. He shivers a little, goosebumps raising the hairs on the forearm of the elbow he’s got his face tucked into. It comes to his attention that he’s naked, and the ensuing realisation of why has him flushing, warming himself up from the inside.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Impressions of memory flitter in and out behind his eyelids, of Nicky’s body wrapped around his, of the way his ocean eyes became deeper than the Marianas trench when Joe entered him, of the way they’d fluttered shut as he came apart under Joe’s hands. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe shifts until he’s leaning on his elbow, surveying the room. He frowns when it comes up empty.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Rising from the bed, he quickly learns that every room is similarly absent of Nicky’s presence. There’s a chorus of quiet resignation singing in his chest, growing louder with each weary step he takes into the silent kitchen. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The warmth inside him takes on a hollow edge, like he’s knocking at the bones of a vacant home, begging to be let inside. The mosaic tiles beneath his feet too sharp on the edges, the light peeking through the curtain too bright in his periphery, soaking the empty room in lines of pink and orange hues, bringing forth another day alone.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Forever feels like a joke, and he’s the punchline. </em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Joe has Nicky spread out on their bed, pressed deep inside of him, thrusting into Nicky with slow, deliberate, controlled movements. Meanwhile, Nicky feels like he’s going to shake out of his own skin with Booker’s words still scraping through his mind like a guilty conscience.</p><p>His fingers, gripping the sheets, itch to light up a cigarette, to press it to his lips and breathe in something other than this hollow feeling of regret. He wants to forget, wants Joe to <em>make him</em> forget everything but this, here, between them. He won’t get there with the pace Joe has decided to set tonight.</p><p>After the third attempt to coax Joe into something a little faster, arching his back into Joe’s thrusts but getting absolutely nowhere with the way Joe is holding his body down, Nicky thumps his head back against the sheets and groans in frustration.</p><p>“Fuck me like you mean it,” he snaps in complaint, unthinking, when Joe refuses to speed up.</p><p>Joe’s rhythm stutters, momentarily thrown. Nicky goes to apologise, regret already clawing up into his throat like a sob. <em>Shit,</em> he thinks, panicking. <em>Shit, shit-</em></p><p>But Joe seems to shakes himself out of it, and resumes the frustrating pace but fucks into him a little harsher, keeping Nicky held with his weight and his hands curled around Nicky’s wrists.</p><p>Joe pulls himself out until just the head of his cock is inside Nicky, keeping him open and spread out. Nicky feels a hot flush race through him as Joe stares down at them, abdomen shaking with restraint. Nicky tries to clench down on Joe’s head and groans at the empty feeling inside of him.</p><p>Joe leans down and murmurs in Nicky’s ear, “I <em>always</em> mean it.”</p><p>He snaps his hips back inside, punching the breath out of Nicky’s lungs in one swift motion.</p><p>“<em>God</em>,” Nicky chokes out.</p><p>He’s scrambling to get it together, but Joe is incessant now, drilling into him, spearing him open with each shove inside in a way that’s got Nicky on the thrilling edge of orgasm in no time at all, curling low and hot in his gut.</p><p>Then a large hand leaves his own to come up and rest along his collarbone, in the base of his throat. It’s a tease, and a familiar one at that. Joe knows how much Nicky loves this, how he’ll surrender under Joe’s hand wrapped around his neck all too easily.</p><p>“What do you want?” Joe asks, sitting up as his fingers caress the skin of his clavicle, a hot brand, a tantalising promise.</p><p>But the only thing that goes through Nicky’s mind is this:</p><p>
  <em>I want to rewrite our story and make it so I never broke your heart. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want to forget that I know what you sound like when my broadsword punctures your lung.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want to take all that hurt and wear it like a battlefield of bruises on my body.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want, I want, I want-</em>
</p><p>“You,” Nicky breathes out instead, “just you, <em>please</em>.”</p><p>It’s not a lie, but it’s not what Joe was asking either and they both know it.</p><p>Joe leans down and kisses Nicky anyway, the hand on his throat falling to Nicky’s cock, and then everything devolves into the sound of skin on skin, and even that is barely heard over the choir of moans between them.</p><p>There are things he wants to tell Joe. About how he ripped the womb out of his mother when he came screaming into this world, how he learned too early that people don’t make good homes, how he only knows how to crumble slowly, like her gravestone did, worn down with each swipe of his own corrosive hands.</p><p>How most days, he’s unsure if he’s the explosion, igniting, furious and bright, destroying everything in its path, or if he’s the shrapnel bursting out of the shell, digging into skin, pervasive, making its unstoppable way to its target, tearing through extremities with vicious efficiency.</p><p>Either way, he is not something to be survived.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>“I love him,” Joe sobs pathetically, the force of it pressing up against his throat like a rancid cough. He’s sitting on the floor of the kitchen in Malta, leaning against the uncomfortable cupboard doors, where he hasn’t moved from all day. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>From his place next to Joe, Booker offers him a swig from his flask. Joe takes it with shaking hands, knocking his head back to swallow down the bitter liquid. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know,” the Frenchman replies sympathetically, taking back the flask and screwing the cap on, before tucking it back into his jacket.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t know how to put it down,” Joe admits quietly, “I don’t know how to make it stop.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Booker makes a small noise in his throat and tugs Joe into his side, wrapping one arm around his shoulder to allow Joe to cry into the sleeve of his shirt.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t think you can, mon gros.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe punches his arm half-heartedly. “‘M not fat, you fucker,” he protests, but he’s smiling.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Ah, you mistake me, good friend, for I was referring to your massive co-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe shoves him to the ground before he can finish the sentence, but he overbalances and falls down with Booker, and soon enough both of them are howling with laughter.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Nile is asking Nicky if there’s any places he’s thinking of going, once they have the all-clear from Copley. She and Nicky are sitting across from one another at the kitchen table, Joe and Booker on the other two ends, eating dinner.</p><p>Nicky has been dreaming of splitting his knuckles open in the dry cold air of winter. In the dream, he sits in Yusuf’s lap, and Joe kisses every bloody line across the divots of each exposed bone and tells him that he's beautiful. It’s Nicky’s blood in his mouth when Joe kisses him.</p><p>Nicky just shrugs and answers honestly, “I haven’t really thought about it. Might stick around here for a while.”</p><p>Booker raises his eyebrows in shock; even Nile seems a little surprised. Joe, for his part, is very much <em>not</em> looking at him, staring intently down at his own plate like it’s suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.</p><p>“What?” Nicky asks defensively, “Someone has to make sure Nile doesn’t start thinking French is a respectable language to learn.”</p><p>Booker flips him off, and Nicky returns it, not missing the way Booker’s eyes flick to Joe worriedly afterward. It makes something fierce and indignant well up in Nicky’s chest; <em>Nicky</em> is not the one Joe needs protecting from.</p><p>But as Joe looks up at him and shoots him a small smile, some part of Nicky’s mind can’t help but wonder:</p><p>
  <em>Are you sure?</em>
</p><p>-</p><p>It’s not until later, when they’ve settled into bed that night, that Joe asks him, “Are you sure you don’t want to head off somewhere for a while?” into the nape of Nicky's neck.</p><p>Nicky frowns, a little off-kilter from the unexpected question without being able to see Joe’s face.</p><p>“No? Why, is there somewhere you’d like to go?”</p><p>Nicky feels Joe shake his head quickly, the tip of his nose brushing against his skin. Nicky’s confusion grows, and he rolls over so that he can look at Joe.</p><p>“I just-” Joe cuts himself, shrugging, “you don’t stay in one place very long, usually.”</p><p>Nicky pauses at that, thinking very carefully about his next words. He takes Joe’s hand between them and swipes his thumb across his knuckles before pressing his lips to them.</p><p>“I don’t, usually,” he agrees, “but I’ve got a very convincing reason to stay this time around.”</p><p>Joe’s eyes go all soft around the edges at that, and he smiles up at Nicolo like he just offered Joe the sun straight out of the sky on a silver platter.</p><p><em>You are the sun</em>, Nicky thinks desperately as Joe tugs him in for a kiss. <em>You are everything.</em></p><p>The thought is just as terrifying as it was a few months ago; the urge to run, that ancient instinct buried deep in his bones, calls to him. But even more terrifying is the thought of losing this, of losing Joe.</p><p>Maybe that’s why he doesn’t ask about Malta, even though the question presses against the roof of his mouth, insistent and trembling with uncertainty.</p><p>Instead, Nicky presses his lips to the vein along Joe’s neck, thinking about how every pulsing line leads to Joe’s heart like a tapestry of roads, how Nicky has mapped out every single one and arrived upon that beating, beautiful inevitability like a starving beggar each time.</p><p>Nicky would happily get on his knees and sip love from Joe’s cupped hands, through cracked lips, but Joe’s love has always been an outpouring, torrential thing and Nicky is drowning, drowning, drowning.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>“You selfish piece of shit!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe yanks at his restraints, sitting up so he can yell at Sebastien properly. The man next to him looks miserable, but it’s resigned. Joe is incandescent in his fury, a harsh and hot feeling overlaying the deep caverns of betrayal in his chest.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe’s only solace is that Nicky isn’t here to see this, isn’t strapped down here being experimented on like a lab rat too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Booker chuckles ruefully, like anything about this is funny, and says, “Come on, Joe. You can’t tell me you never thought about ending it.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And there’s something disquieting about the way Booker says it, something in between the lines of his words that doesn’t sit quite right with him. Like he thinks Joe would understand, as if they’re anything alike.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Aren’t they? Both longing for something they can’t have?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe swallows. “Not like this, Book,” he denies quietly.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“All we have is our grief; all this life has in store for us is grief. Think about Andy and all she’s lost, about Quynh. My family, gone. You lost Nicky-”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I would never do something like this,” Joe cuts in viciously, “I’d never sell you out like this.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Booker just laughs again, and Joe has to close his eyes and let out a slow, shaky breath. He rolls back his head into the table, reminding himself that Nicky will come for him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Nicky will come for him.</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Memory is all he has left of his mother. But even the definition of memory changes, the lines and tracks of it deepen or disappear altogether with time. He can’t picture her face, but he thinks he can hear her in the old lullaby he hums underneath his breath when he’s trying to calm himself down. He knows he has her eyes; sometimes, he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and wills himself to see anything but a graveyard with blood spilled over it.</p><p>They’re sitting together on the couch when Nicky finally asks him about it.</p><p>Joe’s looking at him in that old, familiar way again, like he’d let Nicky break him in two if he asked nicely enough. Nicky isn’t sure how he fooled himself into thinking that Joe didn’t love him for so long. Though if he was being honest with himself, he knows that was never really the problem.</p><p>No, the problem was that Joe loves him a little too much, and Nicky’s never been good at handling fragile things.</p><p><em>I don’t want to be the thing that breaks you</em>, Nicky begs with his eyes, <em>not anymore.</em></p><p>Nicky splays a hand out in the air and waits for Joe to slide his fingers in between the gaps. Thumb swiping his scaphoid bone, feeling the little bump on his wrist where he knows Joe has a small scar from when he was a boy, although he doesn’t remember how he got it. It’s a strange thing, Nicky muses a little sadly, to bear only the evidence of hurts that they can no longer recall.</p><p>“Why don’t you want to go back to Malta?”</p><p>The questions hangs itself in the air between them for a moment. Joe doesn’t let go of his hand, but he does look away.</p><p>Nicky tries again.</p><p>“What are you so afraid of, Yusuf? What is it that you’ve been so desperately avoiding? You know that I love you-”</p><p>And Joe <em>flinches</em>. He blinks at Nicky, stunned, caught.</p><p>Oh. <em>Oh.</em></p><p>It’s then that Nicky understands. The realisation makes Nicky drop Joe’s hand, swallowing down the ever-growing lump in his throat.</p><p>He concludes very quietly, “You don’t trust me.”</p><p>Joe scrambles to take back Nicky’s hand, replying indignantly, “Of course I trust you! Nicky, how many times have I put my life in your hands-”</p><p>Nicky shakes his head, “That’s different. You trust me to protect you on a mission, but you don’t trust me with your heart, not really. You don’t trust me to stay. You’re avoiding it with Booker, and you’ve been avoiding it with me, too. Burying the shitty things we did to you in order to make us feel better, in order to keep us around.”</p><p>It makes Joe shut his eyes, shut him out, and Nicky wants nothing more than to gather him up into his arms and make them forget all about it. He squeezes Joe’s hand instead, waiting for him to respond.</p><p>“You <em>left</em> me,” Joe says when he opens them again, and then it’s Nicky’s turn to flinch.</p><p>Joe repeats, “You left me, Nicolo. In Malta, and after our fight – can you blame me for trying to, I don’t know, make this easy for you?”</p><p>Nicky moves into Joe’s space too quickly for him to even register doing it. He raises his hands to cradle Joe’s face, heart tightening at the tears gathering there.</p><p>Suddenly, nothing is more important than making Joe understand the words he’s about to speak.</p><p>“I don’t want easy, I want <em>you</em>,” Nicky murmurs, voice thick with emotion, eyes searching Joe’s own, begging Joe to believe him.</p><p>Finally, Joe nods. Nicky blows out an explosive breath of relief and leans forward to kiss him, close-mouthed and gentle, slow.</p><p>It’s not much, but it’s enough. It’s a start, sprouting from the ground, amongst a myriad of decay.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>“So,” Booker starts smugly, “you and Nicky finally got your shit together, huh? Was I cockblocking you all along?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Fuck off, Book,” Joe returns without heat. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Nicky is passed out on the sofa next to them, and Joe is having a hard time concentrating on the game in front of him with the sight of Nicky’s face, soft in sleep, smushed against the armrest. 900 year old assassin his ass, he thinks fondly. Adorable. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Nicky’s touch on his skin is like a poultice on a very old, aching wound. Does everyone see the way Joe pleads love me, love me, love me, with every glance? Does he give it away so easily, like those billboards lining the highways in the Midwest that scream HELL IS REAL?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Seriously, Joe,” and Booker’s tone makes Joe look over at him, really look at him, the clarity in his eyes from the sobriety, the gentle pride lingering there, “I’m happy for you.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There’s a lot he’s not saying, like ‘maybe this life isn’t just grief after all,’ like ‘seeing you find love and Quynh find her family again has made me realise there’s happiness to be found here too,’ like ‘I’m sorrier than words can convey, but I will find a way to make it right.’</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Joe smiles slowly, and replies, “You should be - my team’s about to win.”</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning, with open hands and hearts and eyes, they tell each other the bitter things trapped under their tongues, until they start to taste like forgiveness.</p><p>“Malta was- it’s hard to explain. I felt embarrassed, almost. Waking up alone was devastating in of itself but to know you left <em>me</em>-” Joe takes in a shuddering breath, “I know that you were leaving for yourself, for your own reasons, but I couldn’t get past the fact that it was <em>me</em> you were running from. Like there was something wrong with me.”</p><p>Nicky swallows, nodding in understanding, pushing down his own guilt to focus on Joe. Joe picks at his own cuticles until Nicky takes his hand and lets Joe pinch his skin reflexively instead.</p><p>When it’s Nicky’s turn, he tells Joe about his mother; her focaccia bread, her eyes, the Ligurian lullaby he sings sometimes. How she doesn’t have a proper grave anymore, her body long since returned to the earth, but if Joe wouldn’t mind they could visit, lay flowers where they first met.</p><p>Sometimes healing can look a lot like breaking. Like the charred bark of the eucalyptus tree, falling away as the new leaves push out from the blackened, burned parts of itself. Or the loggerhead shrike, moulting, sloughing off its feathers and replacing them each year. Or the way our cells split open, break apart in order to make new ones, replace what was worn and weary.  </p><p>A mitosis, then. An unbreaking of sorts. <em>Let me see underneath all that hurt. Let’s see if we can’t break each other open gently enough to hold all these little traumas in our hands.</em></p>
<hr/><p>They do go to Malta, eventually.</p><p>After Nicky tells Joe about the weapon he shares his body with, after Joe tells Nicky that forgiving Booker was a lot like forgiving Nicky, Joe takes Nicky’s hands and says, <em>ask me again.</em></p><p>America is swallowing up its own foodbowl, and there’s a dustbowl of history rolling behind their teeth, but the saltwater is warm on Nicky’s skin as he wades into the sea with Yusuf.</p><p>Joe’s been teaching him Arabic, or the blend of Tunisian-Arabic he learnt growing up. Nicky finds he loves the way Yusuf’s full name rolls off his tongue, loves to greet Joe in the morning in his own language, watch the way his eyes light up each time he tries a new phrase, even if Nicky stumbles through and over the words sometimes.</p><p>“Ya Hayati,” Nicky murmurs to him now, as he comes closer to Joe, warmth radiating from his bare body in the water.</p><p>When Joe cups Nicky’s face in his hands and whispers <em>you are love incarnate, </em>dripping from the gaps between Joe’s fingers and carrying out into the breeze, Nicky believes him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>What did you guys think? Please let me know in the comments, I loved writing this continuation &lt;3<br/>Come yell at me on <a href="https://peachpitandpomegranate.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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